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She makes sense, for sure. Is she enough of a brawler? Eugene Debs, Robert LaFollette, Henry Wallace, maybe Raph Nadar, also and sense. But the destiny of the Republic requires, this once, a tough guy (he can have a VP of any combination of genders and colors as long as they are really good and can balance the macho chieftain who can knock Trump (or Pence, should Trump step down) of the pedestal.

She has big ideas for repairing the American economy. The other Democratic candidates should too.

Senator Elizabeth Warren is running for president with a platform that aims to reform American capitalism.CreditFrank Franklin Ii/Associated Press

March 15, 2019

Senator Elizabeth Warren is running for president with a platform that aims to reform American capitalism.CreditCreditFrank Franklin Ii/Associated Press

Bill Clinton had a consequential presidency when it came to the economy. He brought down the Reagan-era deficits, helping spark the strongest economic boom in decades, and he made the tax code more progressive.

Barack Obama had an even more consequential presidency. He halted the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. He did so in part by signing a stimulus bill full of spending on education, wind energy and other programs with lasting benefits. He also put in place new regulations for Wall Street and extended health insurance to almost 20 million people.

By the end of Obama’s eight years, G.D.P. growth was still disappointing. Middle-class and poor families were still receiving less than their fair share of that growth. Median household wealth was lower than it had been two decades earlier. In the most shocking sign of struggle, average life expectancy has declined in recent years. Rich Americans, on the other hand, continue to thrive, amassing Gilded Age-level concentrations of wealth. The resulting frustration helped make possible the rise of Donald Trump.

So far, only one candidate among the 2020 contenders has an agenda with this level of ambition: Elizabeth Warren. Her platform aims to reform American capitalism so that it once again works well for most American families. The recent tradition in Democratic politics has been different. It has been largely to accept that big companies are going to get bigger and do everything they can to hold down workers’ pay. The government will then try to improve things through income taxes and benefit programs.

Warren is trying to treat not just the symptoms but the underlying disease. She has proposed a universal child-care and pre-K program that echoes the universal high school movement of the early 20th century. She favors not only a tougher approach to future mergers, as many Democrats do, but also a breakup of Facebook and other tech companies that have come to resemble monopolies. She wants to require corporations to include worker representatives on their boards — to end the era of “shareholder-value maximization,” in which companies care almost exclusively about the interests of their shareholders, often at the expense of their workers, their communities and their country.

Warren was also the first high-profile politician to call for an annual wealth tax, on fortunes greater than $50 million. This tax is the logical extension of research by the economist Thomas Piketty and others, which has shown how extreme wealth perpetuates itself. Historically, such concentration has often led to the decline of powerful societies. Warren, unlike some Democrats, comfortably explains that she is not socialist. She is a capitalist and, like Franklin D. Roosevelt, is trying to save American capitalism from its own excesses.

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“Sometimes, bigger ideas are more possible to accomplish,” Warren told me during a recent conversation about the economy at her Washington apartment. “Because you can inspire people.”

Before I go further, I want to offer two caveats. One, Warren’s grasp of the country’s problems does not necessarily mean that she should be the Democratic nominee for president. Politics is not an expertise competition. The nominee should be, and most likely will be, the candidate who best inspires voters. Maybe that will be Warren, or maybe it will be someone else.

Two, I don’t agree with all of Warren’s proposals. Her plan to break up the big technology companies seems too uniform, for example. Her plan to put workers on corporate boards may not be as practical as, say, a big federal push to increase workers’ bargaining power.

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Paul Krugman did explanatory journalism before it was cool, moving from a career as a world-class economist to writing hard-hitting opinion columns.SIGN UPSenator Warren’s proposals include a universal child-care and pre-K program, and a wealth tax.Credit Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

Senator Warren’s proposals include a universal child-care and pre-K program, and a wealth tax.CreditGabriela Bhaskar for The New York Times

But whatever my — or your — specific objections, Warren is identifying the right problems and offering a coherent vision for a post-Obama Democratic agenda. “Clinton and Obama focused on boosting growth and redistribution,” Gabriel Zucman, a University of California, Berkeley, economist who has advised Warren, says. “Warren is focusing on how pretax income can be made more equal.”

She isn’t simply proposing larger versions of Obama’s (worthy) tax cut for middle-class and poor families, as several 2020 candidates have. Her plans are also much more detailed than those of Bernie Sanders (who, to his credit, pushed the party to become bolder). And she has avoided getting trapped in the health insurance wonkery that too often dominates progressive policy debates. The future of the republic does not actually depend on the relative sizes of Medicare, Medicaid and the private market.

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It may, however, depend on whether Americans’ incomes and living standards are consistently rising.

In the months to come, I hope that every other 2020 candidate offers answers to the questions that Warren has taken on: How can corporate America again help create a prosperous, growing middle class, as it did from the 1940s through the 1970s? How can the power of giant corporations — over consumers, workers and smaller businesses — be constrained? How can the radical levels of wealth inequality be reversed? How can the yawning opportunity gaps for children of different backgrounds be reduced? How can the next president make changes that will endure, rather than be undone by a future president, as both Obama’s and Clinton’s top-end tax increases were?

It is not surprising that Warren has jumped out to an early lead in the ideas primary. The main theme in her life, both professional and personal, has been economic opportunity. Her father was a carpet salesman at Montgomery Ward in Oklahoma City in the 1960s, until he had a heart attack. He had to switch to lower-paying work as a janitor, and her mother got a minimum-wage job, answering phones at Sears.

Warren’s three older brothers all went into the military. “That was their chance to make it into the middle class,” she told me. Warren went to college and became a teacher, until the school chose not to renew her contract rather than give her maternity leave. She then went to a public law school — for $450 per semester — and became a bankruptcy expert, early on at the University of Houston and ultimately at Harvard.

“The way I see it is, I have lived opportunity,” she said. “I’ve lived the kind of opportunity that comes from a government that invests a little in its kids, a government that tries to keep the playing field a little bit level for folks like my family.”

Her theory of political change has been shaped by two experiences — one failure and one success. As a professor in the 1990s, she served on a federal bankruptcy commission and fought against legal changes that favored banks over borrowers. The fight went on for a decade, and Warren’s side lost. The defeat left her believing that a technocratic legislative debate — “the inside game,” as she calls it — almost always favors industry lobbyists.

Stormy Daniels Payment: Cohen claims first-hand knowledge of hush money payment made to Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels before Election Day to silence her about a sexual encounter she had with Trump. Cohen obtained a home equity line of credit to pay Daniels $130,000 (clearly highlighted in exhibit). He provided oversight committee with a clear signed copy of check dated Aug 1, 2017 from Trump’s personal bank account. The check is allegedly one out of 11 installments from Trump to Chen reimbursing him for using line of credit to pay Daniels. Cohen claimed that Trump directed him to lie and say that Trump had no knowledge of payment to Clifford.

Stormy Daniels Payment: Cohen claims first-hand knowledge of hush money payment made to Stephanie Clifford aka Stormy Daniels before Election Day to silence her about a sexual encounter she had with Trump. Cohen obtained a home equity line of credit to pay Daniels $130,000 (clearly highlighted in exhibit). He provided oversight committee with a clear signed copy of check dated Aug 1, 2017 from Trump’s personal bank account. The check is allegedly one out of 11 installments from Trump to Chen reimbursing him for using line of credit to pay Daniels. Cohen claimed that Trump directed him to lie and say that Trump had no knowledge of payment to Clifford.

Credibility rating (1-5)? Solid five. Check is clearly signed, amount is highlighted, and the home equity docs are there to back up. Trump also denied the payment, but hasn’t exactly been vocal on denying the act itself. Unfortunately, we have this very detailed description and Mario Bros’ toadstool is no longer a nostalgic memory of a fun video game for us 90s kids.

Cohen Evidence 2: Deutche Bank Financial Statements Cohen gave the committee three years of Trump’s financial statements stating that Trump had “strategically inflated or deflated” his personal assets. The statements were given to Deutsche Bank when Trump was asking for a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills and to improve his Forbes ranking on list of wealthy Americans.Credibility rating: Hard five. Cohen’s legal team provided multiple, detailed financial statements. Cohen showed committee two news articles that were examples of how Trump would under or overstate his assets when it was convenient. The first article in the Guardian, describes how Trump tried to reduce his local taxes on New York golf club by claiming it was actually worth $1.4 million instead of $50 million in assets he listed on financial disclosure he released when running for president. The second article from Forbes demonstrated how their estimate was VERY different from Trump’s estimate of his net worth. Trump claimed he was worth almost $9 billion while Forbes put him around $4 billion. The disparity was due to differing evaluations of worth of Trump’s brand. Cohen Evidence 3: The Straw BidderCohen testified that Trump set up a fake bidder to purchase a portrait of him at an Art Hamptons event. Trump wanted his portrait to be purchased for the highest price of the day. The straw bidder, Stewart Rahr, bought the portrait for $60,000 and later the Trump Foundation, a “charitable” organization repaid Rahr using its funds. The WP wrote a similar story in 2016. Credibility scale: 4.5/5: Remember kids, corruption and fraud are the most common crimes, therefore, the easiest to prove.

Cohen gave the committee three years of Trump’s financial statements stating that Trump had “strategically inflated or deflated” his personal assets. The statements were given to Deutsche Bank when Trump was asking for a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills and to improve his Forbes ranking on list of wealthy Americans.Credibility rating: Hard five. Cohen’s legal team provided multiple, detailed financial statements. Cohen showed committee two news articles that were examples of how Trump would under or overstate his assets when it was convenient. The first article in the Guardian, describes how Trump tried to reduce his local taxes on New York golf club by claiming it was actually worth $1.4 million instead of $50 million in assets he listed on financial disclosure he released when running for president. The second article from Forbes demonstrated how their estimate was VERY different from Trump’s estimate of his net worth. Trump claimed he was worth almost $9 billion while Forbes put him around $4 billion. The disparity was due to differing evaluations of worth of Trump’s brand.Cohen Evidence 3: The Straw BidderCohen testified that Trump set up a fake bidder to purchase a portrait of him at an Art Hamptons event. Trump wanted his portrait to be purchased for the highest price of the day. The straw bidder, Stewart Rahr, bought the portrait for $60,000 and later the Trump Foundation, a “charitable” organization repaid Rahr using its funds. The WP wrote a similar story in 2016. Credibility scale: 4.5/5: Remember kids, corruption and fraud are the most common crimes, therefore, the easiest to prove.

Cohen Evidence 4: Russian Trump TowerCohen was circumspect and did not use the word “collude” in his testimony. However he was very clear that Trump would do anything to win. Cohen stated Trump asked numerous questions about Moscow negotiations and referred to as specific meeting on June 2016 that Donald Trump, Jr, Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort attended.Credibility rating? Put this one at a three, maybe 3.5. There’s no recording or email threads documenting this meeting (or it’s not being released in C-Span public testimony) . Although likely and the subject of numerous long form articles, more proof is needed. Tragic, because this is one of the most important pieces in case against Trump. One of the most important moments of the hearing wasn’t from Michael Cohen, but from Rep Elijah Cummings (D) during his closing remarks. He said: “You come saying I have made my mistakes, but now I want to change my life,” “And you know, if we…as a nation did not give people an opportunity to change their lives, a whole lot of people would not do very well.” Cummings may be able to offer this benediction, but I’m not that forgiving. Am I glad Cohen’s testimony exists? Sure. But let’s not kid ourselves. This is a man who only came forward because he is facing prison time, because he was caught. This is not a crisis of conscious. Cohen enabled a white supremacist, made sure a lot of hard-working people didn’t get paid, and bullied a lot of schools into keeping Trump’s test scores and grades secret.We have just begun to scratch the surface of Dumb Dumb Watergate. We’ve known for a while that the president is corrupt. But will he pay for that corruption? Does this evidence mean anything or is it just financial statements and salacious anecdotes that will just be another aspect of Trump’s terrible presidency that we’re numb to? We have the evidence. We’ve had the evidence, when do we get the conviction?

Martin Levine, former Canadian Foreign Service Officer at Government of Canada (1978-2009)

Martin Levine, former Canadian Foreign Service Officer at Government of Canada (1978-2009)

Americans who are concerned about such issues sometimes point to Canada as a kind of liberal test bed. As I have said in some other Answers this can be very deceptive. Conditions are very different here. So is the Canadian Constitution. So are attitudes. So is the economy. So are the political lobbies.

You can
extract a few examples and possibilities but you have to be careful with them
and not overextend them.

You’d
Need A Comprehensive US Liberal Platform

At both
the federal and provincial levels Canada has Liberal Parties. They put forward
what their definition of what “liberal” means in the Canadian context. If they
get elected they enact their liberal platform, to the extent that budgets
allow.

The
United States does not have this. The Democratic Party does not pretend to be a
liberal party. It’s a grab bag of interests, big corporations, minority group
activists, career social workers, people who believe in open borders, people
who want the Second Amendment cancelled, some trade unions. etc. This does not
add up to a liberal platform. The supporters of Bernie Sanders are saying just
that. If it wasn’t so difficult to form third parties in the USA, they would
probably be one.

The
Liberal Party of Canada has, as part of its platform, things that are not
necessarily part of a liberal repertoire. However, since they are the Liberal
Party of Canada they have plenty of say so. The Liberal Party platform
includes:

-A
commitment to multilateral free trade agreements.

-A
commitment to international peacekeeping.

-A
legalized commitment to a very limited, defined, constrained type of
ethnocultural multiculturalism.

-A
legalized commitment to official bilingualism.

-A
commitment to high immigration levels, with a focus on economic immigration,
and provincial participation in selection.

-A
commitment to recognition of the grievances of Canada’s indigenous peoples, and
negotiations on a “nation to nation” basis.

-A
commitment to managed agricultural supplies.

-Economic
stability as a strong, strong priority, with freedom of competition curtailed
in some cases, if it has to be.

-Using
government-owned companies to accomplish certain economic and social
objectives.

-A
commitment to nation wide standards of medical, educational and social
services, expressed in part by transfer payments from the wealthier provinces
to the poorer ones.

Most or
all provincial governments accept some of these principles, as well as the
commitment to a comprehensive social safety net, expressed by government
enacted social programmes.

You
Need Political Parties, Not A Bunch of People Shouting

What
political party would be prepared to advocate this in the USA, to the extent it
is applicable? And, you need a political party, not a bunch of individuals and
groups grandstanding, blogging, expressing passionate views, decrying enemies,
etc.

At the
United States federal level, that political party would have to commit itself
to a “core” standard liberal programme, basically a capitalist social democracy
with social justice created via social programmes. Then they would have a menu
of alternatives like the above and would have to choose some. It wouldn’t be
much different at the state level.

The
Supreme Court Would Have A Field Day

The
default position of the United States Constitution is that powers not specified
as federal belong to the states. The Canadian Constitution is the reverse.
Canadian law and cultures don’t have the same concept of society being
subservient to the untrammelled rights of the individual. A federal or state
political party that tried to approximate Canadian liberalism would face a
barrage of lawsuits and court challenges. The decisions would establish how far
American liberalism could go, without constitutional amendments. This would
play out over time as standards are established by legal precedent.

So,
Liberal America Takes Charge

Say,
for example, revulsion against the excesses and failures of the Trump
Administration opens a window of liberal opportunity. The Sanders faction and
its allies take over the Democratic Party at the federal and most state levels.
This liberalized Democratic Party continues much of the Sanders platform, with
some add ons. The Democratic Party wins the Presidency and one or both houses
of Congress. Similar things happen at the state level.

Various
permutations and constitutions could arise. Here is just one scenario:

We’re
Broke

The new
Democratic administrations look at the books and choke a little bit. They are
taking over after a Trump administration that wasn’t fiscally conservative.
Rather, the Trump Administration made deep tax cuts without creating
countervailing sources of government revenues. (Except tariffs, which are a tax
paid by American consumers and consumers to the United States Government. In
Canada, the federal government at one point was virtually addicted to these
tariffs.) They have to do the same exercise that new administrations in Canada
customarily do. That is, announce a fiscal crisis, blame it entirely on the
previous administration, and use it to justify cancelling their campaign
promises.

Then
the new administration looks for spending freezes and cuts that won’t cause a
public uproar. The go-to is freezing civil service salaries and reducing the
civil service by attrition . (Civil services have unions and contracts with the
governments. You can’t just fire people.) Then, the new administration looks to
creep taxes up. Start with higher “sin taxes”, liquor, tobacco, and in Canada
as of October 17, weed. Then, raise the gas tax a few cents. Raise income taxes
on higher income people. Reduce tax rebates. Look for ways to tax Internet-base
transactions.

Some of
the Social Programmes Are Already There

The USA
is far from being without some social programming. That’s what social security
and medicare are about. The new Liberal governments will have to squeeze out
enough money to augment them and make them more universal. Social security
benefits get raised but people may have to pay more payroll taxes until they
retire. Obamacare gets expanded. However, the new Democratic federal
administration hits a medical wall. The American medical system is among the
most costly in the developed world, without producing population wide
superlative results. In Canada, doctors bill the provincial health insurance
plans. Hospitals are controlled by the provincial governments. Canadian citizens
and permanent residents don’t get hospital bills. The hospitals get provincial
government support and also bill the provincial medical plans fee for service,
for services covered by those plans. (Many Canadians buy supplementary coverage
from private health insurance plans, or their employers provide it.) This
system is cheaper, although you don’t get many celebrity millionaire doctors.
Those new Liberal governments either need to procrastinate or bite a very hard
bullet.

Then,
The Really Hard Part Begins

I
believe these new American Liberal administrations would stumble over the a la
carte parts of liberalism. Canada got through the stumbling stage a long time
ago. The Liberal Party of Canada decided on the menu options a long time ago,
and stuck with them.

In the
United States, developing that stock Liberal platform will cause pain. A lot of
Americans who present themselves as progressives will be very disappointed.
However, the liberalized Democratic Parties of the USA will have to reach out
to swing voters or else get another Trump-type, rewave.

No Open
Border

You
can’t maintain bearable labour market conditions for your less-skilled workers
unless you keep your borders under control. Maybe you even construct parts of
the Trumpian wall. You enhance investigations and prosecutions against those
who illegally hire undocumented workers. You shift the focus of legal
immigration quotas away from family members and specified nations, to skilled
worker and business immigration. Maybe states get invited to use their local
labour market expertise and participate more aggressively in selection. Some
legitimate labour needs get supplied by legal temporary Work Permit programmes.
Canada has one for seasonal agricultural workers.

Eat
Multilateral Trade

The
Trump Administration is doing the American people a great service by showing
them that economic nationalism doesn’t work. Trade wars aren’t good and easy to
win at all. The trade struggles become protracted, America’s trade rivals take
reprisals against working class Americans and farmers, unite against the USA
and look to do business with each other. Average Americans get hurt, badly.

The new
federal Democratic Administration folds down the trade disputes, returns trade
discussions to professional negotiators and diplomatic interchanges, and
accepts that multilateral trade agreements will stay a fact of American
political life and sometimes, the USA will lose.

A
Little Bit of Multiculturalism And That’s It

Race
isn’t the same as ethnicity. The USA has been somewhat successful at
integrating various races into American culture, at least enough.

However
Spanish has emerged a de facto second language in the Southwest and a few major
cities in other regions. The federal Democratic Party discusses the situation with
the state governments. The probable result? English gets declared the sole
official, national language of the USA. Areas with sufficiently large Spanish
speaking populations get legislative guarantees of a limited range of
Spanish-language services, maybe including school bilingualism, the publication
of Spanish-language versions of some municipal, state and federal laws,
bilingual signage at some federal buildings, and that’s it and that’s all.

Spreading
False News and Incitement

Canada
has worked at enforcing against this for a long time. Yes, Canadians have
freedom of speech but not freedom of threatening behaviour. So, if you want to
express your views that us Jews are out to replace you, you can. However,
creating false facts like the Jewish replacement plan and saying, we are acting
in self-defence so let’s go get “em”, is hate speech that incites to violence
and, at least, discrimination. The federal and state Democratic Parties enact
laws that criminalize that behaviour. Then they fight it out in the Supreme
Court.

The
Right to Bear Arms

This
right is in the United States Constitution. Nowhere enough states will agree to
a constitutional change that eliminates the Second Amendment. BULLSHIT The liberalized
Democratic Parties of the USA don’t even waste effort at trying. The better
effort is to increase school security and increase pre-sale checks on gun
buyers. You can’t win them all.

I could
go on and on with this list.

Learn
To Love Your Bureaucracy, Tough Love

In
Canada the Liberal Parties have to work really hard to keep their bureaucrats
on the level. There is a saying here, “The pigs are always at the trough.”
English-speaking Canadians are generally adverse to public displays of emotion.
However a hot news story about public servants behaving badly, will justify
throwing a total fit at your local sports bar. Liberal governments have to
reply heavily on social programmes and strict law enforcement. Never assume
that your civil servants will be competent, place the public interest over
their careers or do the right thing.

So,
that’s your Liberal, quasi-Canadian, America. Disbursements, taxes, functioning
bureaucracies, realism, national humility, you can’t win ’em all and nobody
even gets a full win, eat the hit and move on, there’s no free lunch. If you
need passion and victory, look for it in a sports competition or in your
romantic life.

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INTERESTING THAT REPUBLICANS QUESTIONING COHEN ARE ALL ABOUT CHARACTER ASSASSINATION OF SOMEONE WHO’S CHARACTER HAS ALREADY BEEN ASSASSINATED. BUT NOT ONE, RPT NOT ONE DENIAL OR QUESTION OF MANY OF THE INSIDER COMMENTS CHOSEN MADE ABOUT THE PRESIDENT’S ILLEGAL AND UNETHICAL ACTIONS DURING THE CAMPAIGN AND AS PRESIDENT. NOT ONE QUESTION ABOUT MR. TRUMP. THEIR SILENCE ON That, THat, THAT IS DEAFENING.

This is really provocative stuff from a man on the scene in El Paso where the wall crisis was trumpeted by trump.~ FLS BLOGGER

By casual (non-scientific) observation, based on television and social media reports, not first-hand verification, it appears that the crowds at each of the rallies (Trump v. O’Rourke) were comparable in size.

Among my associates and friends, it is considered common knowledge that claims of a “crisis at the border” Are unfounded, on the American side at least. The border fence does seem to have had an effect in stopping petty crimes in El Paso by desperate people from the Mexican side from availing themselves of the personal property of Paseños (citizens of El Paso). Also the murder rates of the sister cities of El Paso and Juárez are noticeably different with Juárez having about 90 times more homocides than El Paso over the past 3 years despite having only about twice the population. El Paso has regularly ranked as one of the safest large cities in the US for several years running.

Its safety is actually not attributable to the fence but came about in the ‘90s when the border patrol incredibly began for the first time to station agents along the Rio Grande to discourage Mexicans from wading over the shallow river unimpeded. This was the “hold the line” policy of the local border patrol chief Silvestre Reyes who was later elected congressman from El Paso (and after several terms defeated by Beto O’Rourke). Prior to that time the policy had been not to enforce the border but to let everyone cross more or less freely and then try to pick up undocumented Mexican citizens off the streets of El Paso. The fence (wall) was installed later, and then further reinforced around 2006 under the George W Bush administration.

El Paso is overwhelmingly Hispanic with over 80% of Latin heritage. I have heard it said that 70% of El Pasoans speak Spanish at home. Most of our population is bi-lingual. It is a peaceful city of immigrants. Many of us are offended by the characterization of our peaceful borderland being crime-ridden. Nothing could be farther than the truth.

It is the case, however, that the cordial relationship between our sister cities Juárez/El Paso of my youth is gone forever. That went by the wayside largely due to NAFTA which drew thousands of rural poorly prepared Mexicans to Juárez factories looking for a better opportunity. They landed squarely on the US border, most with lack of education and with a ring-side seat to the land of opportunity.

Gone are the days when we El Pasoans could drive across the river for a fantastic lunch, dinner, or shopping. 911 magnified the separation. It can take up to two hours to cross the border now, depending on the hour and day.

As a resident of 60 years, I love living in El Paso. I only wish the sharing and conviviality we once enjoyed with our sister city of Ciudad Juárez were still possible.

Nicolás Maduro speaking in the video: ‘If the US intends to intervene against us they will get a Vietnam worse than they could have imagined.’ Photograph: Reuters

The Venezuelan opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, has claimed he has had held “clandestine” meetings with the military as he attempts to force Nicolás Maduro from power.

Writing in the New York Times, Guaidó said: “The military’s withdrawal of support from Mr Maduro is crucial to enabling a change in government, and the majority of those in service agree that the country’s recent travails are untenable.”

Guaidó, a 35-year-old former student leader and head of Venezuela’s opposition-run national assembly, has been in the forefront of a renewed attempt to force Maduro from power since last week when he declared himself Venezuela’s rightful interim president in a daring challenge to the incumbent.

Maduro has accused Donald Trump and a “group of extremists around him” of plotting to topple him in order to seize Venezuela’s oil, and warned he risked transforming the South American country into a new Vietnam.

In a four-minute Facebook video – published as Venezuela prepared on Wednesday for a day of fresh pro-opposition protests – Maduro said the leaders of the US “empire” were conspiring “to get their hands on our oil – just like they did in Iraq and in Libya”.

Unable to accuse Venezuela’s government of stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, they were instead waging a media campaign of fake news to justify intervening in a country that boasts the world’s biggest crude reserves, Maduro said.Advertisement

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“We will not allow a Vietnam in Latin America. If the US intends to intervene against us they will get a Vietnam worse than they could have imagined. We do not allow violence. We are a peaceful people,” Venezuela’s embattled leftist leader added.

“I ask that Venezuela be respected and I ask for the support of the people of the US so there isn’t a new Vietnam, least of all here in our America.”

In Maduro’s video, he painted himself as an “admirer” of the US who had visited Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York and Washington and wanted closer relations with the White House. “The United States is so much bigger than Donald Trump, so much bigger,” he said.

But Maduro looks unlikely to repair relations with the Trump administration, which has thrown its full weight behind his rival to the presidency, Juan Guaidó.

In a telephone call on Wednesday, Trump reaffirmed his support for Guaidó, and the two men agreed to stay in regular contact, according to the White House.

Maduro also said on Wednesday he was willing to negotiate with Guaidó. “I’m willing to sit down for talks with the opposition so that we could talk for the sake of Venezuela’s peace and its future,” he said.

Maduro said the talks could be held with the mediation of other countries, naming Mexico, Uruguay, Bolivia, the Vatican and Russia.

Later on Wednesday, Moscow repeated its offer to mediate. The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Russia could offer more balanced conditions for dialogue than the west.

“We welcome the Venezuelan president’s willingness to accept such international efforts,” he said at a press conference in Moscow, according to Interfax. “We call on the opposition to display an equally constructive approach, retract the ultimatums, and act independently, guided above all by the Venezuelan people’s interests.”

Moscow has so far offered full-throated support for the Venezuelan leader. Russia has invested an estimated £13bn in Venezuela by refinancing the country’s debt, as well as through oil and arms deals.

At the start of a two-hour protest on Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of students gathered outside the gates of the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas. Professors gave civics lectures to the assembled students, while riot police who almost matched their numbers, watched from a distance.

Among the protesters was Rafaela Requesens, a student activist whose brother Juan, an opposition politician, was arrested after an attempted drone attack on Maduro. Amnesty International has described his detention as “arbitrary”.

“This is the moment to fight for democracy,” she said. “We do not seek confrontation, but rather that the police and military join this struggle. This is not a fight between Chavistas and the opposition; this is a fight for Venezuela.”

More protests are planned on Saturday.

Additional reporting by Patricia Torres in Caracas

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Not good, Mr. Vice PresidentLast week, I urged Joe Biden to run for president, arguing that Democrats would benefit from a diverse field and that Biden’s experience made him unique among the potential candidates. If he ran a strong campaign and seemed right for the moment, he could be the best person to take on President Trump. If Biden didn’t run a strong campaign, he wouldn’t win the nomination anyway.Yesterday brought a reminder that Biden doesn’t have a good history of running presidential campaigns.Alexander Burns of The Times broke the news that during last year’s midterm campaign, Biden accepted $200,000 to a give a speech in Michigan during which he praised Fred Upton, a Republican House candidate locked in a rough re-election campaign. The $200,000 came from a local group with ties to Upton’s family. Biden’s comments ended up in advertisements that helped defeat the Democratic candidate.The episode seems accidental, not corrupt. Biden apparently made the comments off the cuff, motivated by Upton’s work on a bill to support cancer research. And it certainly shouldn’t be a political crime for people to praise members of the other party.But given the money Biden received, he should have been more thoughtful. Instead, he reminded a lot of Democratic voters about a problem with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign: her paid speeches. Biden also offered a reminder that his previous two presidential campaigns — in 1988 and 2008 — struggled from the very start. If he runs this time, he will need to become less careless.

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Note to my Facebook friends: most of you are from the South: Mississippi, Georgia and Alabama leading; a few are from other states Donald Trump also won in 2016: Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania (all of these are embarrassed by this fact As Are a few from the Southern states); many are from foreign countries (e.g., Brazil, Estonia, Latvia, Norway, Japan). It is to this last group that I have to explain that people in this country who support Mr. Trump have reasons for doing so. They have trouble understanding this.

In any case this blog waited for two years before taking much of a vigorous Personal stand on the Trump presidency, preferring simply to post articles from various journals and newspapers that had some critical views on this “Individual- One.” Now before this more focused approach to the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, begins I want to say a word on his behalf: the Politifact checkers, Washington Post, New York Times, and many others who accuse Trump of from 4000 to 7000 lies since Jan 20, 2017 may be exaggerating.

Here’s how: if you lie, and repeat the same lie 50 times, I’m not sure you have told 50 lies. You have told one lie 50 times. So let’s be super-fair and say that Trump has probably told more than 100 lies, although some many times.

Here are documented examples of just 4 lies that many find offensive:

Donald Trump criticized military veteran and Senator John McCain, saying, “He’s not a war hero. He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people that weren’t captured(Video: Reuters, Photo: AFP/Getty)

~ ~ Mc Cain was in prison and being tortured (although less than some) while Trump was getting a deferral for painful “bone spurs” (a condition easily correctible and one that has not proved to be a problem on the golf course)

The
U.S. intelligence community confirmed that Russia interfered in the 2016
election in a interagency report released in early January,and the FBI was
investigating Russian efforts to aid the president before the outcome of the
election was decided, The New York Times reported. A probe is being conducted
by special counsel Robert Mueller — in which four former Trump campaign
officials have already been charged — while the House and Senate intelligence
committees continue to investigate as well.

What’s
more, Trump was warned by the FBI in the weeks after he
secured the Republican nomination that Russians would try and infiltrate his
campaign.

And
despite the Trump team’s insistence that they had no ties to Russia, The Washington Post reported that at
least nine people in his circle had contact with Russians during the campaign
and transition.

Those include Flynn (who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI); a foreign policy adviser named George Papadopoulos (also charged as part of Mueller’s probe); former campaign chairman Paul Manafort (charged on multiple counts, including conspiracy against the U.S.); Trump’s oldest son, Donald Jr.; Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner; Trump’s personal attorney, Michael Cohen; and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was an adviser and U.S. senator during the campaign.

4 Misstatements about Democrat support for border security

Trump’s Speech to the Nation: Fact Checks and
Background

President
Trump addressed the country on Tuesday, the 18th day of the government
shutdown, about border security. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer
delivered the Democratic response.0

Trump Pushes Border Wall,
Democrats Respond

As
the government shutdown grinds on, President Trump laid out his case for the
border wall. Top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were not convinced. Published On Jan. 8, 2019 NY TIMES

Here’s what the president said, and how
it stacks up against the facts.

“The
federal government remains shut down for one reason and one reason only:
because Democrats will not fund border security.”

(CNN)Ready for a break from the winter blahs? How about an all-expenses-paid trip to … Buffalo? Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and Out the Door. (You can also get “5 Things You Need to Know Today” delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up here.)

1. Presidential address

President Trump made the case for a border wall last night during his first Oval Office address. He warned of a “crisis” on the border with Mexico but didn’t declare a “national emergency,” a controversial move that might have led to him bypassing Congress and trying to build the wall with Defense Department funds. The President backed up his crisis claims with lots of misleading statements and fuzzy facts that were almost immediately debunked by reporters and Democrats. You can watch Trump’s full speech here.

Play VideoHow Trump and his opposition talk about the border issue 01:46None of what the President said seemed to change any minds or get the nation any closer to ending the 19-day-old partial government shutdown, now the second-longest in US history. And the pain’s about to get real for the 800,000 federal workers who won’t get a paycheck Friday. There don’t seem to be any serious negotiations going on between the White House and Democratic leaders. And now, even some Republicans appear to be losing patience for an extended shutdown battle, with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska joining a few other Republican senators in calling for the government to be reopened while the battle over the border wall continues.

Play VideoGOP senator breaks with Trump on opening government 01:08

2. Russia investigation

Special counsel Robert Mueller believes Paul Manafort shared polling data with a Russian closely linked to that country’s military intelligence while he was running Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. This bombshell revelation came to light because Manafort’s lawyers screwed up redacting parts of a court filing that was publicly released yesterday. This is a big deal in Mueller’s long-running investigation because it’s the clearest public evidence yet of coordination between Trump’s campaign and Russians.

Play VideoDoes Manafort disclosure build collusion case? 03:39

3. Australian suspicious packages

Suspicious packages were delivered to a dozen consulates and seven embassies in Melbourne and Canberra. The British, American, Croatian, New Zealand and Swiss consulates in Melbourne all got suspicious items in the mail. A Croatian official told CNN that a package containing three little packets arrived at the consulate through the mail. Australian police and fire officials aren’t providing many more details, but they don’t believe the packages “pose an actual threat.”

4. R. Kelly

R&B singer R. Kelly could be under investigation in Georgia. A lawyer for Joycelyn Savage, one of the women featured in the Lifetime documentary “Surviving R. Kelly,” said an Atlanta-area district attorney is looking into sex abuse allegations against the singer, though the DA’s spokesman had no comment. The six-part docuseries — which aired last week to much buzz on social media — looked at longstanding claims of abuse and pedophilia against Kelly and featured accounts from his accusers. A lawyer for the singer said the allegations in the documentary are false.

Play VideoR. Kelly has faced these allegations for over two decades 03:10

5. Cancer

Cancer deaths in the US have been falling steadily for a quarter century, a new study says. The US cancer rate dropped by 27% from 1991 to 2016, according to a study from the American Cancer Society. That means there were about 2.6 million fewer cancer death than there would have been had death rates stayed the same. That’s heartening for sure, but there was still some bad news mixed in. The disparities between rich and poor patients and black and white patients remain, although the racial gap appears to be closing somewhat.

Play VideoMichael Bublé opens up about son’s cancer 01:03

THIS JUST IN …

Headed outDeputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will leave the Justice Department in the coming weeks once a new attorney general is confirmed, a source familiar with his thinking told CNN. Rosenstein has been overseeing the Russia investigation.

Play VideoThe man who oversees Mueller’s investigation 01:02

BREAKFAST BROWSE

Play VideoLate night takes on government shutdown 01:37Size mattersBigger is never big enough, at least when it comes to TVs. Samsung is showing off a 219-inch (!!) television this week at the CES show in Las Vegas.

Musical mash-upChildish Gambino. Phish. Brandi Carlile. Looks like there’s a little something for everybody at Bonnaroo, which just announced this year’s lineup.Final frontierWell, that was fast. NASA’s new planet-hunting telescope has only been on the job for three months, and it’s already found three new exoplanets.Walk right in …Why create a car that simply rolls down the road when you can make one that “walks?” Hyundai did.

Donald Trump has cornered himself by insisting that the wall he promised his base—the one that Mexico was going to pay for—must be paid for… by his base. Because Trump is an insane liar person, he’s doing what he always does: spouting insanely dumb and easily verifiable lies. A couple of days ago he made the statement, “This should have been done by all of the presidents that preceded me, and they all know it Some of them have told me that we should have done it.” Really? Really. For real? Yes. That’s what he said. Former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush quickly told people that no, no, they did not tell Trump anything regarding an expensive and pointless wall on our southern border. A short while ago, President Jimmy Carter made a statement going one further.